Who is Roaring Kitty, the user who sent Gamestop’s stock price soaring?

GameStop’s stock price surged over 200% over the last month, bringing the company back into the spotlight for investors. This rapid increase in value is reminiscent of when the stock rose from under a dollar to $81.25 in just over three months. The surge is attributed to internet collaboration by a group of Redditors who aimed to counter major hedge funds that had bet against the stock. The entire saga was made into a movie last year titled ‘Dumb Money’ starring Pete Davidson and Paul Dano.

GameStop, which sells video and computer games, has in many ways become obsolete now that many games can be purchased directly from the consul or computer a gamer has at home. In 2019 and 2020, GameStop stock was seen as so unlikely to succeed that it became one of the most ‘shorted’ on the market, meaning that investors and hedge fund managers were betting that the price would fall. With gamers able to purchase games directly on their consuls and computers, the need for brick-and-mortar stores became obsolete. When someone ‘shorts’ a stock they essentially sell shares of a stock they do not own, based on the assumption that it will be worth less in the future than it is now.

When big hedge funds do this, they can effectively push the stock’s price down themselves, signaling that they expect the stock to fall and spreading a negative perception of the stock. However, in this instance, once a group of Reddit users were determined to fight against the trend and plowed their money into GameStop.

This was part of a wider trend of investing in ‘meme’ stocks, which refer to companies that are seen as so outdated that they have become the subject of greater interest amongst online communities. There have also been notable price increases of Nokia, Best Buy, Blackberry, and Theaters’ stock, all of which were heavily shorted by Wall Street investors.

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Roaring Kitty and the rise of GameStop in 2021

The GameStop short squeeze, the name the event has been dubbed, took place in January 2021, and one of the trend’s most significant leaders was a Redditor by the name of DeepFuckingValue or RoaringKitty on Twitter and YouTube. Roaring Kitty, whose legal name is Keith Gill, got help from others who believed in his mission of standing up to Wall Street and allowing small investors to get their share of what they saw as a rigged game. Now, three years after the incident that made him famous, Gill is 37 years old, and he has returned to the internet for the first time.

In September 2019, Roaring Kitty shared that they had invested $53,000 into GameStop in the previous months. At the time of the post, the stock price had risen to 85 cents, and the investment was worth $113,000. However, it wasn’t until December 2020 that their actions began to spark a larger movement as the stock price fluctuated around the $4 mark. The post gained attention on WallStreetBets, a financial subreddit known for its volatile and chaotic trading discussions.

In September 2020, Ryan Cohen, the successful co-founder of the online pet store Chewy, revealed that he had acquired a nearly 10% stake in GameStop. He increased his stake to 13% in December, and in January 2021, Cohen joined the company’s board of directors with plans to lead GameStop into the digital market. This news encouraged Reddit users to invest more heavily, causing the price to skyrocket in recent weeks and surprise the markets. At the time of writing, the stock is worth roughly $350, but posts on WallStreetBets predict the price could rise above $1,000, or even $5,000 if those holding stock continue to do so.

Now, with Roaring Kitty back online, the GameStop price has been boosted even further, though it still remains far below the levels seen in January 2021. Trading has not yet opened on Tuesday, and it will be critical to evaluate how the stock does as investors, both those online and on Wall Street, consider their options.